San Jose State: The athletic director search (UPDATED)

*** SUNDAY, 8:30 p.m. update: Bleymaier will interview with the search committee on Monday, according to multiple sources. Said one: “At this point, he’s the only candidate. If it doesn’t work, they’ll have to go to a Plan B.”

*** Before we get to the search, one lingering thought on the Mountain West:

I couldn’t help but notice that MWC commissioner Craig Thompson, when asked what Utah State brought to the table, went to great lengths to praise USU’s leadership. But when asked the same question about SJSU, Thompson talked about it being a dynamic, growing university.

And could you blame Thompson for not waxing poetic about the school’s leadership? SJSU has change presidents every 12-18 months the past few years. (The current boss, Mo Qayoumi, was out of town when Thompson made an important campus tour earlier this spring.)

In addition, athletic director Tom Bowen, who led a year-long push for entry into the MWC, took the Memphis job in mid-April.

So in a sense, the Spartans were very lucky to receive the invite — far luckier, from a leadership standpoint, than Utah State.

Thoughts on the AD search // …

Now that the Spartans have secured a spot in the Mountain West, the focus turns to finding a replacement for Memphis-bound athletic director Tom Bowen.

I expect the search to heat up next month, and to potentially last several months.

One reason for the delay is that Cedric Dempsey, the former NCAA president who consults with the CSU and UC on executive searches, is working with UC Davis to fill its AD vacancy. That’s supposed to reach a conclusion in early June, at which point, sources said, Dempsey will turn full attention to SJSU.

I have no doubt that numerous names will surface over the coming weeks and months — one potential candidate is CSU Monterey Bay’s Vince Otoupal — but for the purposes of this post the focus will be on two potential candidates. (At this point, before the vetting and interview process, everyone is a potential candidate):

Marie Tuite, the Spartans’ interim AD, and Gene Bleymaier, the former Boise State AD.

Multiple sources have told me that Bleymaier has strong interest in the vacancy and is being supported in his push by Dick Vermeil, a Spartan alum whose relationship with Bleymaier dates back decades (Bleymaier played tight end for Vermeil at UCLA in the mid-1970s).

From the football perspective, Bleymaier is an incredibly strong candidate: He built Boise State into a powerhouse. Then again, Boise State and San Jose State have far more differences than similarities. (Among those differences: the 49ers, Raiders, Giants, A’s, Warriors, Sharks, Cal and Stanford.) Could Bleymaier be successful at SJSU? Sure, but he’d have to take a different approach with football.

Bleymaier also comes with baggage: He was let go by Boise State following revelations of NCAA violations in multiple sports over multiple years. The Broncos “failed to establish an adequate compliance system,” according to the NCAA.

That’s a very serious charge. It happened on Bleymaier’s watch, and president Bob Kustra apparently believed Bleymaier was responsible: “I determined that new leadership will be needed as we commit ourselves to the highest level of attention and enforcement of NCAA standards,” Kustra said.

Football success is the key to Spartan athletics — the Spartans couldn’t do any better than Bleymaier from that perspective. But the school, and by extension the CSU leadership, must be willing to reconcile his strengths with his baggage.

Tuite, meanwhile, has taken over for Bowen and done a marvelous job, by all accounts — in particular her handling the MWC entrance process with the help of deputy AD John Poch.

She understands SJSU’s complex, difficult existence as an urban school in a pro sports market in a state system that has endless layers of bureaucracy and enormous budget problems.

And, according to a source, Tuite has the support of football coach Mike MacIntyre.

Again: Other candidates will no doubt surface over the coming weeks, SJSU may determine that Bleymaier merits serious consideration, and it’s difficult to know if Tuite fits the AD model that Qayoumi (with Dempsey’s help) has in mind.